Monthly Archive: March 2016

29

If this weren’t written by Betty White, who I adore, this would probably get two stars. And all I can think is that if I don’t have something nice to say about such a lovely person’s writing, I just shouldn’t say anything at all. I’m having flashes to when the Friends would go see Joey’s play and say things like “the costumes were GREAT.” “The lighting, whew, spot on.”

I think this book is meant to be a cute gift book, a stocking-stuffer with some Betty White reminisces with a few words of wisdom thrown in. It was less than three hours as an audio book but still took me nearly a month to finish because I just wasn’t that interested. And it pains me to say that.

The chapters where she discusses her love of and experience with animals were quite sweet, and some of the stories from when she was first starting out were quite cool. But I can’t bring myself to recommend this.

28

My husband visited Costa Rica about a month after we started dating, and he’s wanted to go back ever since. He asked that instead of my regular planning, that I just get a guidebook and let us see what happens when we get there. So, I bought this one.

It’s fine. I don’t know how to review travel books – I think I should always wait until I get back, but by then I’ve moved on (I try to always review books within a day or two of finishing). This book seemed a little light though on what I think I need. Maybe it’s because it’s my first time going to a country I’m really unfamiliar with, so everything just bleeds together. I can’t tell any of the national parks apart, so I’m not really sure which ones I want to try to see.

But maybe that’s a good thing. We’ll pick a place on a map, find a bus that goes there, then open up the book and see what we’ll see.

27

A few weeks back a good friend and I got into a disagreement, the details of which irrelevant. It lasted maybe five minutes then the day went on as usual, no hard feelings or underlying grumpiness. But there was something about the way we interacted that made be wish it had been different. I generally don’t like disagreeing with a couple of my friends who seem extraordinarily confident that their opinions are fact because I end up feeling a bit off. I don’t agree, but I’m not entirely sure how to get that across without being an ass.

I did a little research into how to disagree with someone without acting and sounding like a jerk, and this book repeatedly rose to the top. It’s a bit academic but very easy to read; the three star rating is more a function of the fact that this book is nearly 20 years old and could definitely benefit from an update that addresses internet interactions. Unfortunately Dr. Elgin passed away about a year ago, so any update would need to be done by another author.

Dr. Elgin is probably better known to folks as a science fiction author, but she’s also an expert in language studies. The main premise of this book is that people aren’t (usually) jerks to be jerks. She suggests that there are instead different ways of viewing discussions, including discussion as combat, life as a football game and life as a schoolroom. It’s sort of fascinating, and allegedly backed up by research. She offers different scenarios and ways to go about both diffusing them and avoiding getting into them in the first place.

She also calls b.s. on a lot of the common thinking about differences in the way genders communicate, and instead suggests those differences are more about who is in (or attempting to demonstrate) power. I found that to be a fairly spot-on commentary, although it opens up a whole other line of questioning around the expectations of women when they speak, including the desire that we should be agreeable. Are men out there buying books like this?

I do wish she’d spent a bit of time looking at how language is used in intentionally hostile ways, which she suggests is rare. I’m guessing that any woman on Twitter (especially women of color) would beg to differ, and it’s possible that the suggestions in this book aren’t helpful in those instances.

Of course, as I say that, I just checked amazon and apparently she did issue an updated version in 2009 that looks at how to handle ‘casual racist and sexist language;’ unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be in print still. I’m going to guess that if you’re interested and can find it, the 2009 version would be better.

20

This week I gave up on a book. I wish it was this one; instead it was Emperor of All Maladies. That is a really good book, it’s just too dense. So I turned my eye to this, because I’m going to be discussing it with other folks at book club in a week.

Man, it was bad. Not ‘Cinderella’s Diary’ or whatever that awfulness was a couple of years ago, but still bad. Yet somehow it has a 4-star rating on Good Reads. How is this possible? It’s SO BAD. Bad enough to not even deserve a clever header image.

Now, I really don’t ever read short stories, so I don’t know – is every story supposed to sort of end with no resolution? Do they always feel kind of pointless? I know that novels sometimes end without resolution, but usually there’s at least enough time throughout the novel to build characters to the point that I care.

I don’t *think* anything connects these stories, although maybe five of the six could be characterized as about people who are stuck in the past. The rest of the review includes spoilers (I guess), so read on if you like. If not, just take my word and skip this one.

Nirvana – Man’s wife is temporarily but possibly permanently paralyzed, is obsessed with Kurt Cobain. Husband has built some sort of virtual reality allowing everyone to talk to a recently assassinated president. The technology writing is laughably inaccurate, the characters aren’t fleshed out at all. It was a quick read because it felt like it was written by a teenager. 1 star.

Hurricanes Anonymous – Man had already lost everything. Then hurricane Katrina happens. Then his ex leaves his son with him. He leaves to get a car from his dying dad. Maybe forever? Unclear. This one had more potential so I was ultimately disappointed. 2 stars.

George Orwell was a Friend of Mine – This one had the most potential to me, and felt the most developed. Former prison warder from East Germany doesn’t really think he did anything wrong. Kind of ends up cracking up. Weirdest part was the sort of glossed over fact that he apparently raped his passed out wife every night of their marriage. 3 stars.

Dark Meadow – Oh this guy is a pedophile (but he only LOOKS at the pictures, guys) who was abused as a child. More tech writing that is probably crap. Creepy as FUCK. 1 star.

13

Last week one of my city’s neighborhoods had a huge explosion, leveling three businesses and damaging three dozen more. On Friday my husband and I went there to meet up with friends and spread some local economy love, cash-style. We wandered into a (mostly) used bookstore called Couth Buzzard (plywood still covering nearly all of the windows) and this book just jumped out at me. I ended up reading it in one day because I could not put it down.

Dr. Paul Kalanithi was 36 years old (my age – which, given the subject matter of the book, really drove it home to me) when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He and his wife (also a doctor) were sorting out their next steps, as he was basically a superstar, about to finish up the last of his education and essentially write his own career check. Instead of a dream job, he got appointments with an oncologist.

This is different than other books I’ve read written by people with terminal diagnoses. Dr. Kalanithi majored in English literature and earned a Master of Philosophy before pursuing his medical degree., which translates into a fantastic ability to tell a story. And as dire as those of us who haven’t experienced might imagine his situation to be, the story isn’t exhausting. I didn’t find myself crying during the main part of the book, just during the epilogue, written by his wife, which was lovely and brutal.

Instead, I found myself thinking. Contemplating. Really trying to figure out how I would handle trying to sort out what to do with my life when I knew it was going to end sooner than I always thought, but not knowing exactly how long that might be. How do you go from looking thirty years in the future to wondering if you have one year, or five, or maximum 10? What would your future look like and how would you sort out your values? If you had one year, maybe you’d quit your job. But what about five?

The book doesn’t give us answers. There aren’t sweeping statements about how to live your life that you could see stitched on a sampler. I genuinely believe there is a place for books like that, but I think books like this are so needed to.

12

This is a really clever and interesting book about data and what it can tell us about the world. It was a quick read even at 250 pages, had great charts (which makes sense, as at the end he shares that he used Edward Tufte’s visual displays as a guide, and Tufte’s displays are the best), and was interesting. The main reason I only gave it three stars is because as I’m writing this review a mere five hours after finishing it, I can’t really remember much of it.

Mr. Rudder cofounded OKCupid (the site where I met my husband, so sweet) and used to write blog posts about what he learned from the reams of data OKCupid collected. He taps into profile word choice, attractiveness rankings, number of messages received and a host of other data from this site to draw some high level conclusions that are genuinely of the “huh, that’s kind of interesting” variety.

And yet I don’t recall any of his big conclusions (although I did enjoy the section that showed by race and gender the least likely words to be found in profiles). I think this book probably would have worked much better as just a series of blog posts on different topic areas; I’m just not convinced that there is enough of a coherent theme for it to hold together strongly as a book. And yet I’d still recommend it to anyone who likes data, sociology and anthropology.

One chapter I do recall focuses on social media and specifically how users can attack others. But instead of focusing on women like Anita Sarkeesian or women of color who get attacked online just for existing, he chose three examples of women who made varying levels of not-funny jokes. One was Justine Sacco, who made a supremely unfunny and racist joke about AIDS, Africa, and her whiteness. Look, I’m sure that many of the people who jumped on that bandwagon were full of faux outraged, but Mr. Rudder refused to acknowledge that one reason that led to that reaction is because the butts of such jokes (in this case, Black people), have the ability to fight back and be heard in a way they didn’t have before. So it wasn’t just the internet being mean to Ms. Sacco, it was Ms. Sacco having to actually deal with the pain she caused other by telling a racist joke. This is one of the only times that really stuck out to me as Mr. Rudder completely missing the point, though, so I guess that’s a good thing.

5

This tiny little book contains more within its 50 pages that many longer tomes. It is simple and to the point. The title is not just a refrain; it’s an obvious statement of fact. Women should be feminists. Men should be feminists. We should all want the social, political and economic equality of the sexes.

This booklet is based off of a TEDx talk Ms. Adichie gave in 2012. You may have heard her previous talk about stories; if you haven’t, check it out online. I had heard great things about this one, and finally purchased it last week. Of course, if I were a 16-year-old student in Sweden, I would have already received it.

In such a short book she manages to address issues of culture, of normalizing men in positions of power. She also points out the ways in which gender inequality harms men. It’s not just a problem for us ladies; toxic masculinity and the pressures men face to ‘be manly’ are outcomes of gender inequality as well. In my favorite passage she smacks down those annoying comments calling for feminists to instead talk about human rights instead of gender rights. “Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general – but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender.”

That actually got me thinking a bit about this political cycle in the U.S., and even more so when she speaks later about the need to also understand that class is an issue, but that even poor men still have privileges over women even if they do not also have wealth. I keep thinking about Bernie Sanders and what I’ve been seeing as his attempt to whittle everything down to class. There are intersections of which class is hugely important, but looking at class alone is totally insufficient to address the problems many people face. We need to look at racism. We need to look at sexism. And we need to look at class. I’m having a hard time being able to support him (in the primary) because I think he genuinely believes that if we fixed income inequality, all these other problems would disappear, and I just don’t agree.

Before I wrap this up, I do want to point out something. I know that there are many women that I would otherwise classify as feminists who hate the term because of its association with White Feminism™ and the type of privileged white women who ignore intersections of race and gender, and class and gender. And I totally get that. But I still think the premise Ms. Adichie shares holds: we should all (men and women alike) seek gender equality.

4

A friend lent me this book because she thought I’d appreciate the humor in it. For the most part, she was right! This is one in a series of books written by Ms. Mellor about challenges of parenting. She has a couple of boys, and writes to fellow parents about ways they can maybe keep their children from a) annoying the hell out of the rest of the world and b) not turning into total jerks when they are adults.

I thought the premise was going to be about how to travel with children, but that’s only maybe a third of the book at most. So I think maybe it should have just been a collection of essays about raising children, marketed as a sort of advice book. I’m having trouble reviewing it not because it’s bad or anything, it’s just sort of all over the place. The tone is even, but the topics are kind of hard to follow. A collection of essays would have been easier for me to take in.

That said, the humor is entertaining but not over the top, and the suggestions don’t seem absurdly offensive (but not being a mother I wouldn’t know how close to the bone she’s really cutting). If you’re a mom or dad and come across it in the bookstore, I say read it, and if it speaks to you, I can see it being a funny book to share with friends.